"Don Pearce" wrote

He's typical of his type, I'm afraid. I'm always amused at American
cowboy films, with their virile white men doing brave things. The huge
majority of cowboys were black or Chinese - and what they actually did
was herd cattle. But I guess that won't put backsides on seats in
movie theatres.

My goodness, little boy, what strange history books *you've* been reading!

There *were* black cowboys in the old west, and a fair number of Hispanics
as well, but they weren't a majority, and so far as recorded history goes
there were no Chinese cowboys worth mentioning unless you count the
occasional chuck-wagon cook, Etc.

In the heat of your fever you may have confused "Chinese cowboys" with
"Chinese construction workers" who actually *did* do the majority of the
dirty work in literally blasting the Central Pacific Railroad through
California's Sierra Nevada mountains on the way east to Promontory Point
(turned out the Irish weren't tough enough for the job) but there were very
few if any Chinese cowboys.

There's a good reason for this. A competent cowboy had typically been roping
and riding (and doing everything else cowboy-related as well) since about
the time he was big enough to sit astride a horse without being actually
tied on. This is still true in some parts of the American west.

Your typical Chinese immigrant on the other hand was a young-to-middle-aged
man of the peasant class who had most likely *seen* horses on several
occasions during his earlier life, but the odds of him having ever been in a
saddle were practically nil; much less had he ever learned to toss a lariat,
castrate bull calves, Etc., nor had he ever been afforded any way to acquire
*any* of the skills needed to perform the job in question.

These are *not* skills that one picks up overnight, and just as today,
employers preferred to hire workers who had at least *some* background in
the field. And spoke the same language as well.

Sorry.